San Diego County stores

• Ralphs (Kroger): 25 stores, down from 30 in 2003. (Kroger also has 11 local Food4Less stores that wouldn’t be affected by a strike.)

• Vons (Safeway): 56 stores, the same number as in 2003. A Mission Hills store is slated to open next spring.

• Albertsons (Supervalu): 55 stores in the San Diego region, which includes part of Riverside County, down from 60 in 2003.

The Ralphs supermarket chain has decided to shut down all of its Southern California stores for an undetermined amount of time if grocery workers go on strike, while Albertsons plans to close up to 100 of its stores.

Those statements from the chains come as leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers are locked in heated negotiations with representatives for the Ralphs, Albertsons and Vons supermarkets.

The UFCW negotiators gave a required advance notice Thursday evening that they may call a strike as early as 7 p.m. Sunday, affecting 62,000 Southern California workers, of which 10,000 are in San Diego County.

Both sides are still actively negotiating and hope to reach a deal before that deadline.

Ralphs employs about 1,800 union workers at its 25 stores in San Diego County and about 18,000 in Southern California.

“If there is a strike, Ralphs will initially close all of our stores,” said Kendra Doyel, spokeswoman for the chain. “During a strike, it is difficult to create a good shopping experience for our customers and a good working environment for our employees.”

In-store pharmacies would remain open, she said.

Doyel said it’s “upsetting” for customers and employees to cross a picket line. During the 2003 strike, the stores couldn’t keep shelves stocked and had trouble getting products transported because of untrained employees, she said.

In the event of a strike, Ralphs would hire some temporary workers to pack up food, then close the stores. The company would continue to “evaluate the situation” before deciding when to reopen the stores, she said.

The decision would not affect Food 4 Less stores, which are also owned by parent company Kroger.

The Albertsons chain issued a statement late Friday saying that one of the lessons it learned during the 2003-04 labor dispute is "that it doesn’t make good business sense to try to operate all our stores during a strike."

"At this point, we believe up to 100 stores could close for some or all of the strike," said the statement from Albertsons. "Any decision to reopen closed stores will be based on the business conditions at that end of a strike. We hope it does not come to this."

The statement did not indicate which of Albertsons' 55 stores in its San Diego district (which includes part of Riverside County) could be closed.

The Vons and Albertsons chains have been taking applications from temporary workers. Vons, which has 56 stores in San Diego County, said Friday night that it plans to operate stores in “as much a business as usual fashion as possible,” a spokesman said.

Mickey Kasparian, president of the UFCW Local 135 in San Diego, dismissed the news as a scare tactic, saying he doesn’t believe any closure would be for a significant amount of time. He noted that after the 2003 strike, the Ralphs company was indicted and eventually pleaded guilty to criminal charges that it covertly rehired hundreds of locked-out workers under false names and Social Security Numbers.

“If they want to close their stores, go ahead and close them,” Kasparian said. “Given their history, I do not believe anything they say.”

Kelly Cunningham, economist at the National University System Institute for Policy, said a prolonged closure of the Ralphs stores would be “another blow to the economy” with the loss of those 1,800 jobs.

With thinner profit margins, it might make sense for a grocery company to close stores during a strike, said Esmael Adibi, director of the A. Gary Anderson Center for Economic Research at Chapman University. Factors at play include high food prices and competitors such as Fresh & Easy and Target.

“I think the labor unions have to realize they’re dealing with a market that’s generating less and less profit for the industry,” Adibi said. “If (the company) just said ‘forget it’ and leave, it would definitely be bad news for a lot of workers, especially union workers.”

“This is not a win-win solution,” he said. “This is a loss on both sides.”

The workers’ contract expired in March, and negotiations have hit several snags since then. Most recently, a sticking point has been how much money the chains will contribute to the union’s health benefits fund, which pays out money for employee health benefit claims.

The fund, valued at “several hundreds of millions,” is one of the largest in the nation, but it has been running a deficit with the grocery chains reducing their contributions this year after the contract expired, Kasparian said.

The chains have proposed to replenish the fund, but not to the level the unions say is need to prevent it from running a deficit.

Kasparian said the fund would be drained within 18 months under the chains’ proposal, requiring workers to increase their out-of-pocket costs. The grocery representatives have disputed that statement, saying the fund would be adequate to sustain benefits. It’s difficult to know who is right because the actual numbers aren’t being released.